Sadly thats true : (
It is my history too, and this is what Lincoln said about it:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; …
1 Like
That’s a pretty lame excuse to declare independence, since the separatist Catalonian politicians are themselves very fond of ignoring laws and court rulings that they don’t like, and are very corrupt.
1 Like
Regardless, the comparison is still a false equivalency.
I’m not sure why you felt the need to quote Lincoln, misspelling his name in the process.
4 Likes
Because you are exposing a revisionist explanation of why the Union went to war.
Oops, typo corrected. I profusely apologize.
1 Like
Assuming the vote was along party lines, the arithmetic at least suggests they’d have known (not that that was their reasoning necessarily, but that they knew how it was going to go down)
135 MPs
-70 voted for secession
-10 voted against
-2 abstained
= 53 had to wash their hair that day
If those 53 had voted against secession, it would have come out 70-63. A victory for secession the vote was predicated on simple majority, a defeat if it was predicated on almost any kind of supermajority.
1 Like
Revisionist? Excuse you???
The rights that the Southern states wanted to ‘preserve’ was the right to own slaves, because their economy was based entirely on the exploitation of unpaid labor.
That’s not “revisionism;” it’s a fucking fact, to the point that states like Mississippi included wording stating that as their motivation in their official declaration.
That Lincoln was not “the great emancipator” that nostalgia likes to paint him as is completely irrelevant.
Nice attempt to move the goalposts from what you originally stated.
12 Likes
Yes, catalan politicians (in government) have broke the Spanish Law because Spanish politicians refused to change it (or even negotiate) in order to celebrate a referendum. But if you want to keep playing the law game, they didn’t break the Catalan Law, and this is the one they obey.
Jordi Pujol is retired and is a disgrace for Catalonia. He is corrupted and he deserves to end in prison (once the sentence comes), but he stopped being the catalan president 14 years ago. During his time in politics nobody knew he was corrupted, therefore the comparison with spanish politicians is not valid. It would be valid if he was still in the government. All the official honours of former presidents have been removed from him. As I said, he is a disgrace and nobody supports him. There is no current member of the catalonian government involved in any corruption case.
2 Likes
Given Spain’s major no-holds-barred Franco-move on them, ‘officially’ declaring independence was the only thing left to them; that could forcibly drag the international community into the mess now and perhaps result in blunting Spain’s push for TOTAL control over Catalonia.
3 Likes
The South separated and went to war to preserve slavery. The United States went to war to preserve the Union.
1 Like
It takes two sides to go to war; nitpick semantics all you like, your original comparison was still an inaccurate one.
4 Likes
The American civil war is far more complex than “went to war to prevent secession”, as has been noted by others. Note that in fact hostilities were started by the South firing on Fort Sumter, not the North sweeping in until after violence had been started.
The Alaskan referendum wasn’t suppressed by the national government – the state government declined to hold a referendum that a citizen asked for, and the state court accepted that, rather than force them to hold it. I think the court was wrong on the merits, but even accepting they were right, it’s not comparable to the Catalonia referendum and reaction.
4 Likes
The United States went to war against states that tried to separate. It refused accept it and to surrender federal property in the those states, and that is why the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.
1 Like
Just stop.
Repeating yourself incessantly doesn’t make you “right,” and going off topic isn’t validating your original argument.
6 Likes
The German constitution was ratified by the German Landesparlamente, which all have their own constitutions and their own ratification process. More importantly, it has been accepted by the German people by adhering it for decades.
Also, what if it had been ratified by direct vote back then? Most of the people who were of voting age back then are now dead. My mother, who’s turning 82 this year, was 14 years old when the GG was adopted. If a vote were necessary, it would not only been overdue by decades, it would be necessary whenever a majority of voters have not voted for it due to be born later.
1 Like
I didn’t say any such thing? Or did you reply to me by accident?
Nope, not by accident. You asked about the technicalities of the decision. I just pointed out that it is irrelevant. Even it is technically correct, it isn’t a good way to go, like Madrid blocking any Catalonian movement towards a referendum based on technical grounds.
I find it relevant. To an outsider like me, a 70-10 vote has, on the face of it, powerful propaganda value, but that’s seriously undermined if it doesn’t meet the parliament’s own threshold for far less momentous decisions.
I make no judgement on the rightness of the action, legally, politically, morally or tactically.
you mean Texans.
This was my reaction too. If the people who were against it showed up and voted and the headline was 70-63, I’d be thinking, “You’re seceding from a country on a 70-63 vote?!?” But 70-10 makes it seem obvious.
Of course, like you, I’m not judging those who boycotted. They did so for reasons that made sense to them within the internal political reality of Calatonia and Spain, not to help some North American understand grasp the situation from a single number.
3 Likes
